Category Archives: Retention

Being a Minority Can Cost You in your Career

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Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!

This just in from the very smart folks at NPR – being a minority might have a negative effect on your career! Really!?

Actually, NPR presents a social science study from the National Bureau of Economic Research that does a very good job explaining what we all already know – but want to easily push off as racism.  From the article:

Economists have long noted that multiple companies in an industry often congregate in an area — think of movie companies in Hollywood or investment bankers on Wall Street — and observed that these firms become more profitable. Indeed, this may be one reason why an up-and-coming tech company would want to locate in Silicon Valley, rather than in Tennessee, where costs are far cheaper.

But why do companies that congregate become more profitable? It has to do, Ananat says, with the fact that when a number of companies involved in similar work are concentrated in one area, they effectively create an ecosystem where ideas and refinements can spread easily from one company to the next, and increase productivity overall.

“It’s stuff in the ether — you know, these tips that get communicated,” Ananat says. “For any given job, it’s going to be specific to that job. That’s why they are so hard to identify and so valuable. We say, ‘Oh, you’re not doing that quite right. Do it just this way instead.’ “

What does all of this have to do with the racial wage gap? Much of this valuable information that gets transmitted and shared in the ecosystem happens in informal or social settings — over lunch, or a beer after work, or even at church on Sunday. Those social settings tend to be segregated, with whites tending to spend time with whites and blacks with blacks. (The next time you are in an office cafeteria, notice who sits next to whom at lunch.) In a world where ethnic groups cluster together, those in the minority are less likely to share and benefit from spillover effects in the ecosystem and are therefore less likely to learn early on about important company developments or technological innovations.

“People of the same race are much more likely to have conversations where they share ideas,” she says. “The fact is you just talk more about everything with people who you feel more comfortable with than with people you feel less comfortable with. And we know that one of the big predictors of who you feel comfortable with is whether you are of the same ethnicity.”

Ananat explains the findings with a hypothetical example: “Say there are 1,000 black engineers in Silicon Valley, compared to 20 in Topeka, and there are 10,000 total engineers in Silicon Valley, compared to 500 in Topeka. Then blacks make up 10 percent of engineers in Silicon Valley, compared to 4 percent in Topeka.”

“A black engineer in Silicon Valley has 980 more black engineers to get spillovers from than does a black engineer in Topeka,” she writes in an email. “Meanwhile, a white engineer in Silicon Valley has 8,500 more white engineers to benefit from than a white engineer in Topeka. Thus, while both white and black engineers’ wages will be higher in Silicon Valley than in Topeka, the white engineer’s wages will increase more than the black engineer’s do — in effect, the white engineer is living in a much bigger city (of engineers) than the black engineer is, if only people within one’s own race matter for urban spillovers.”

How do companies take advantage of this knowledge?  The study went on to explain that certain individuals in companies cross the racial divide (they call them ‘code-switchers’).  Companies who want to ensure all employees are sharing information will engage these code-switchers, and actually work to recruit more code-switchers, as they will work as links between both bodies and knowledge, almost acting like a bridge to the knowledge and to the relationships where the knowledge is coming from.  The companies with more, and more active, code-switchers can gain the most from their complete body of knowledge that all of their employees have.   Using code-switchers as mentors, especially with your minority employees, is also a great way to ensure the knowledge is being shared between the groups.

I love how social science takes the emotion out of a topic like this and looks at the reality of why this is happening.   HR wants to plan events so we all get to know each others cultures better, etc. When in reality, science will show us differences will continue regardless, focus on finding ways to gain the value from all of those differences by finding ways to ensure sharing of everyone’s knowledge is being done.

 

 

Top HR Lies

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In the never ending quest to beat a blog series to death, let’s hope this is my last installment of “Top Lies” (Top Candidate Lies, Top Recruiter Lies).

At this point I’ve completely pissed off ‘candidates’, made some fun of Recruiters, so now it’s time to really have some fun with the easiest target of all  — HR!  For the most part my peers in HR have fairly thick skin.  HR is actually use to being made the joke in the professional world.  The only profession that gets made fun of worse is probably lawyers!  I could do an entire post on why HR lacks respect, but that has been done a thousand times and in reality having respect in HR isn’t a professional dilemma, it’s a personal one!  If you’re in HR and don’t have respect in your organization, don’t blame the HR profession, you need to look in the mirror!

All that being said, HR might be the king of the liars in your organization!  Let’s break down a few of Top HR Lies:

– “In HR we are here for ‘our’ Employees!”  — HR is not an employee advocate.  HR supports the organization’s leadership and mission.  BTW – many HR Pros don’t even get this concept! When push comes to shove, HR will always support that way leadership wants to go, not the way employees want to go.

– “You can tell HR, we are always confidential!” — No we’re not! HR has an obligation to look out for the best interest of the organization, not you.  If you tell HR something ‘confidentially’, there is a very good chance that information will be shared with others in the organization.  The reality.  HR has to mitigate the risk of the organization.  Your craziness has risk to it.

– “We had no idea layoffs were coming…” —  Sorry, but we did.  But we just can’t tell you that and create panic throughout the organization.  So, we lie. It sucks, but there isn’t any other way.

– “No, you can’t change your health benefits until next Open Enrollment, it’s the law!”  — Yeah, that’s kind of a lie as well!  There are laws governing when we ‘have’ to allow you to change your benefits (marriage, child being born, divorce, etc.), but HR can decide to change the plan rules and allow you to change if we wanted. But, that becomes a logistical nightmare!  Even with keeping our plan rules intact, we can still get around it.  Let’s say you are a young employee and chose the crappy low-cost catastrophic major medical plan that basically covers nothing, but you’re young and nothing will ever happen to you. Then, something does happen to you.  You come to HR. HR says, “We told you so! Sorry, you have to wait until next Open Enrollment, have fun with that cancer!”  HR could actually fire you on a Friday, hire you back on Monday and have you sign up for the ‘new’ insurance.  Based on your plan there could be some audit risk based on IRS code, section 125 – so check it out before you go do this. But, it’s not like you’re doing this all the time – this is maybe once a year for a desperate situation – I’ll take that risk (and have) to help my employee in this situation!

– “We fire people!”  — HR has never fired anyone, ever.  Managers of of employees fire people.  HR just supports that decision, and frequently influences a manager to make that decision, but we don’t pull the trigger.  Managers blame HR — “HR is telling me I have to do this”, but that’s a lie as well.  HR advises of the consequences if certain actions aren’t taken. Ultimately, leaders make the final decision on what is actually going to happen.

– “Top performers get rewarded!” — Actually, in most organizations even average performers get rewarded….and low performers.  We have a compensation plan and don’t want to leave anyone out. So, you can be great and get a 3% raise. Your cube mate could be a slug and get a 1% raise.  How does that feel?

–  “We treat everyone equally!” — The reality is we treat certain employees better and give them more leeway to screw up, because they are more valuable to the organization.  Not all employees are create equal.  That was just something that sounded good on the poster for the break room.   Some employees are actually substantially more valuable to the organization than you are.  We treat them differently.

– “We value diversity and inclusion!” — We actually really don’t give a crap about this.  It gets shoved down our throats, legally, organizationally, etc. What we really care about is filling positions with solid talent.  But leadership makes me provide a report that counts the color of faces, so now we have to care.  So we care about the number of faces, not the true sense of diversity.  Don’t hate the players, hate the game.

Alright HR Pros – What Lies Did I Forget?

 

 

Most Embarrassing Termination Ever

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You probably saw this when it hit the interwebs on Sunday and blew up yesterday, but if you didn’t, AOL’s CEO, Tim Armstrong, fired an employee while on a conference call with 1000 AOL employees!  Here’s the actual verbiage from Slate:

“It was supposed to be a conference call to rally the troops ahead of what would undoubtedly be hard times. And at first it sounded that way. But then at one point Armstrong can be heard saying (minute two of the recording), “Abel, put that camera down, now.” And then: “Abel, you’re fired. Out.” A few seconds later, he went on as if nothing had happened. The victim? Patch creative director Abel Lenz. Business Insider notes that if Armstrong fired Lenz for taking photographs it was an odd reason. Lenz always took photographs of meetings to then post in the company’s internal site.” 

And we wonder why American CEOs get a bad rap…

I’ve been a part of some pretty ugly terminations in my day.  Terminations when the CEO, or another senior executive, comes to you and says “Tim, go let go of ‘so-and-so'”.  My response is always, “Sure! What for?”  I say ‘Sure!’ first to make sure I’m on their page.  I need the ‘what for’ because I need to put it on the form. In HR we always have a form, for that executive to sign-off on.  In the business we call that ‘CYA’, technically.   If the superior I was speaking to was hot, I would usually get this response, “Because I said so”.  I would then quickly type termination reason: “Because I said so” on the form and ask them to sign it.  This usually got to the real reason, as I’ve yet to run into a senior executive willing to sign the form with the reason being “Because I said so.”

To Abel’s credit, he responded with “No Comment” on Twitter from a bar soon after being fired with a picture of the bar.  G*d, I love social media!  This might be the most public firing I’ve ever heard of in a corporate setting!  Clearly, we don’t know the behind the scenes information.  Did Tim tell Abel not to take pics beforehand, and Abel decided to do it anyway?  Did Abel sleep with Tim’s wife the night before, and Tim just got a text from the misses?  Did Tim just hate Abel and actually planned to do this all along?  I doubt those facts will ever some out.

I would pay to be a part of the HR weekly meetings at AOL this week!  HR is vilified about 99% of the time by executives, the 1% when we are their needed ‘partner’ just happened at AOL.  The CEO had a major brain fart, and now needs to know how HR will get his ass out of this mess.

So, I’ll ask you HR Pros!  What would you do in this scenario?

 

 

Why Shrinking College Enrollment Is A Bad Sign For HR

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Colleges and Universities will have fewer students this fall as enrollments across the board are falling.  The reasons?  It’s a number of factors – decline in college-aged kids, rising tuition costs and continued soft job market for new college grads, is making it a perfect storm for students to decide to forgo college and try and get into the job market in any job they can.  The idea being  – why go to college and come out in debt, when those who have are getting the same job I’ll get – service oriented, lower end jobs, sales positions that don’t require a degree, etc.

Here’s the big issue for employers – we need those kids in school to fill future jobs!

While the government and analyst continue to say the U.S. has a soft job market – those HR/Talent Pros in the trenches are seeing something very different!  Not enough ‘qualified’ workers for the jobs we have.  Not enough skills and training, increasing numbers of retirees and 5 plus years of not funding our own corporate training programs, have left many employers short on talent.  Having fewer college graduates in the future will only add to the shortage of a trained, technical workforce.   The current lack of STEM talent in all areas of the country is startling – and this only gets fixed by having more students in those programs, not less.

In the last year alone Microsoft released a report showing that the unemployment rate for STEM related jobs is at 3.4% – where ‘full employment’ of a field, by government standards, is considered to be between 4-5%.  These figures are during the recession!  In Michigan alone the automotive industry is searching for thousands of engineers and IT professionals – with graduates of STEM programs coming out to multiple offers and compressing salaries in many organizations.  Many other parts of the country are showing positive signs of coming out of the recession as well.  This adds to the issue of lower college enrollment as employers will soon be taking more STEM kids before graduation with the lure of money and instant employment.  We are already hearing stories about this during this summer’s internship season where engineering and IT interns are being asked to stay on full time and salaries very close to those who have already graduated.  Many students will drop out, figuring there is no need to finish, or that they’ll finish later in non-traditional formats.  Most never will.

All of these factors adds to that giant tsunami of retirements that will continue to hit over the next 5-10 years as baby boomers continue to leave the workforce.  How will companies cope?  Many will do what they have been doing for years – moving technical and engineering centers overseas where other countries have far surpassed the U.S. in STEM graduation rates.  It’s a complex time to be in HR in America – on one hand we still have relatively high unemployment as a country, but on the other we have a severe shortage of skilled workers.  The President and Congress believe ‘training’ unskilled workers to be skilled workers is the answer.  It’s not.  That is like telling a Doctor that they will be trained as a Dancer!  It takes more than desire to want to be a talented Engineer or IT Professional – it takes more than being an expert on Xbox.  It takes some real analytical ability – which most unskilled workers don’t have.

What can HR do?  Keep your workers.  Find ways to ensure those who want to retire can continue to work but add flexibility and part-time arrangements where you didn’t have them before. Continue to invest in technology – because you will have to do more with less.  Get ready to pay – because STEM workers will hold the negotiating power – more than they hold it now!  What else?  Don’t let your babies grow up to be Cowboys. Don’t let them pick guitars and drive them old trucks….Get it?  When your kid says they want to go to college and study something that they struggle to get a job – do what parents do – help direct them down another path – an easier life path of being employed.

 

Inclusion – As Defined By A Conservative White Guy

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Before I go off – let me say I’m 100% sure Pro Diversity and Inclusion camps don’t have me in mind to be their spokesperson.  You see I’m white. I’m middle-aged. I’m a male.  I tend to lean conservative in my political views, moderately.  So, if you’re really into Diversity and Inclusion – I can totally see why you’ll immediately discount everything I’m about to say.  If I was a women – a black woman – a liberal black woman – a liberal black woman in a wheelchair  – well then – I’d expect you’d listen pretty closely. Right? Don’t kid yourself.

If that’s the case – you’re as closed minded as you believe I am.

I’m completely sick and tired of hearing about Diversity and Inclusion in the way it is being advocated for by my HR brothers and sisters.  It literally makes me sick to my stomach.  Here’s why – with every program, every communication you espouse about your organization being ‘Inclusive’ – what you’re really saying is –

“ABC Company values Inclusion as long as you’re view points are the same view points that we share.”

This isn’t Inclusion!  This is ‘Exclusion’ to the definition!  But you’re selling it as Inclusion.  Am I insane!? (Don’t answer that – it was rhetorical!) Or did someone change what Inclusion really means?

You see – by my middle aged white conservative viewpoint – Inclusion means we should accept everyone – all view points, all colors, all shapes and sizes.  But when ‘I’ the middle aged white conservative guy wants to share ‘my’ beliefs – your organization doesn’t want to hear those.  What you want to hear is that I really have liberal beliefs, that I support abortion, that I think marijuana is harmless, that tattoos are super cool, that everyone should be working from home, that all people have the ability to do all jobs, that I’m not religious – and if I am it’s a religion that you totally support, and that if my religious beliefs somehow don’t support your liberal view of inclusion that I’ll never speak those views publicly and make those employees who do have different views that I uncomfortable – although it’s fine if they throw their views in my face, since that is what ‘Inclusion’ is all about…

The funny thing is – I would define myself as a fiscal conservative, socially liberal and I don’t go to church but was raised around many religions- so I can adapt and fit into almost anywhere.  But since I’m white and middle aged and voted Republican – I can’t fit into most of your Inclusion demographics – which is again is funny to me – since Inclusion is defined as:

“the act of including or the state of being included”

No where in the dictionary did the definition include: “if you believe the same things we believe ‘inclusion’ to mean” or “if you some form of minority”.  The definition is short and clear – Inclusion means everyone is included – even Me – middle aged conservative white guy!  My HR peers are forgetting the “Inclusive” part of “Inclusion”.  I’m reminded of this daily, not because of my own demographic makeup – but I have a 70 year old father still in the work force and he continues to share stories with me about how his 50 years of experience is no longer relative.  That somehow 50 years of experience is becoming worthless.  That on a daily basis – he feels his organization is less inclusive, and more exclusive – because the only people who know anything are the young.  Again – Inclusive-Exclusion at its finest.

But – I understand while you’ll discount this – I’m not liberal – I’m not a minority – the only disability I have is horrible grammar.  I don’t count.  Maybe we can call this ‘new’ Inclusion – “Inexclusion” – being inclusive to those that we share our same ideas, beliefs and opinions.  What do you think?

The Cost of Bad Hires

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If there is one constant in HR and Recruiting – it is the fact that no one will ever agree on how much a bad hire costs an organization!  Never!  It doesn’t matter how much time you put into coming up with some algorithm, how much research to back up your numbers – it’s still going to be 90% subjective/soft numbers at best.  This is the main reason executives in our organizations think the majority of HR/Talent Pros in the world don’t get business!   We come to them with stuff like this:

“We need to reduce turnover because of Engineer who leaves us, costs the company $7,345,876.23!”

Then you go through a 73 slide PowerPoint deck showing how you came up with the calculations all the way down the parking meter expense during the interview, and when you’re done – no one believes you’re even close to an actual number.

The gang over at National Business Research Institute put together a pretty good infographic proving my point – take a look:

NBRI - The Cost of a Bad Hire Infographic

97%+ of the ‘lost’ cost is from “Training” and “Productivity Loss” – those are very subjective measures in almost all organizations.  What that says is – ‘Oh, Jimmy isn’t working out – fire him – and because he wasn’t working out we lost ‘X’ percent of productivity over any other possible replacement (which in itself is a whole other leap)’.  And, we lost 100% of training we put into Jimmy because he is now not here.  Which again is subjective, since most training isn’t one-on-one, and resources used to train are almost always not used just on one person, etc.

So, here’s a better way to figure out the cost of a bad hire:

1. Ask your head of finance or accounting what they think it costs? “Ballpark it for me?”  $10K? Sounds great! We’ll use $10K.

2. Use $10K as your cost of bad hires.

Your reality – HR’s Reality – is it really doesn’t matter what the number is – only that the powers that be in your organization all agree on the number. Stop wasting your time trying to come up with a better number – just come up with a number that those signing the check agree is probably legit.

 

I Love Hiring People Who’ve Been Fired

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Their are few truisms I know in HR.

1. As soon as you think you’ll never be surprised again by something dumb done by an employee – you’ll be surprised.

2. You’ll be asked every year in HR to reduce your budget.

3. Employees will always believe HR knows more than HR really does know.

4. HR vendors always say they’re giving you their ‘lowest’ price, until you say ‘no’, then a magical new lower price will come up.

5. . Many employees who get fired were at one time really good employees.

The last one is one I really love!  It is a simple fact of life that most people will at some point in their life be fired from a job.   Might be their fault, or not, either way it’s not uncommon.  Here’s what happens to most people when they get fired – it’s like the 5 stages of grieving : You’re shocked – even when you know it’s coming; you’re pissed – how could you do this to ‘me’; you’re sad – what am I going to do; you’re anxious – I’ve got to get something, now!; and you’re determined – I’ll show you.   It doesn’t happen in this exact path for every person – but for many the flow is about the same.

What you find is that someone who has been fired from a job comes with this cool little chip on their shoulder when you hire them.  It’s this deep down fire to show you and everyone else they know – that the person who was fired, isn’t who they truly are – they are more than that person.  This motivation is great!  It’s a completely different motivation than you get when you hire an employee who is currently employed and doesn’t really need your job.  I want people with some ‘want’ in them – some hunger – maybe a little pissed off with a chip on their shoulder! This edge, and memory of being fired, can carry people to great performance for years!

In our organizations we fire so many people who use to be great, and for a number or reasons you now believe they are crap.  And for you, they truly might be performing like crap – but for me they might be willing to be great again!  We had a saying when I was in HR at Applebee’s, while doing calibration of our teams – “if you talk about someone for more than 10 minutes they turn into a piece of crap”.  Doesn’t matter who – our best to our worst employee – the longer you talk about them, the worse you start to view them.  This happens because it’s in our nature to focus on their opportunities, not their strengths – so the longer you talk the more you talk about what they can’t do, not what they can do.

So, there you have it – send me your crap employees – I’ll love them!

 

 

3 Reasons To Hire Back An Employee You Fired

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There is an unwritten HR law that needs to be addressed.  This law states:

“If you fire an employee, at no time in the history of mankind should you hire back that employee to your organization.”

So it is said, so shall it be…

I was reading an article recently about ESPN’s new CEO, John Skipper, when he was asked about bringing back former polarizing Sports Center anchor, Keith Oolbermann.  Here’s what Skipper had to say about the possibility of bringing back Olbermann:

“I wasn’t here when Keith was here, but he is very talented. So I had dinner with Keith — it was delightful and fun. And I would not have had dinner with him if we didn’t sit around and think about whether there was a reason to bring Keith back. I haven’t met with him again, but we don’t have a policy here that you can never come back.”

So, ESPN doesn’t have a policy about bringing back terminated employees.  Do you?

I know of companies that actually have it written into the policy manual about bringing back terminated employees.  Sometimes it’s a time thing – ‘it has to be more than 5 years’ – or a position thing – ‘it has to be into a different position than they had previously’  – or a severity thing – ‘the termination could not have been for cause’, etc.  Sometimes it’s just the classic unwritten rule thing!  Regardless if it’s written or unwritten any organization that refuses to hire back terminated employees is extremely shortsighted!  Let’s be clear – I’m not saying your should bring back the jerk who embezzled money or sexually harassed every female employee.  What I’m saying is – if you analyzed every single termination you’ve had over the past 10 years in your organization, there are probably some really good hire-backs in that group!  But you wouldn’t know that – because it’s not something you’re going to do – it’s a policy…err…un-policy thing!

Here’s 3 reasons you of when you should potentially hire back a previously terminated employee:

1. They’re the best at what they do.  Yep – talent and performance trumps all.  Well, mostly!  If the person got fired for some kind of behavior that they can’t or won’t change – well, it will end bad again – but many times – having years away and proving themselves all over again in another organization – makes these folks ultra-valuable again to your organization.

2. New Leadership.  Let’s face facts – a large percentage of your terminations happen because of personalities not matching.  In almost every leadership change organizations see high turnover.  This doesn’t truly mean those leaving are bad employees – it’s a phenomenon that happens when you new leadership and ideas meet old leadership behaviors and ideas and they don’t match.

3. Former Employee and You (your organization and leadership) have had significant growth.  I’ve seen some young, less experienced people get fired, who 5 -10 years later were completely different people.  All of that blind fight and energy that had when they were younger which distracted from their talent is gone, and what you have left is this focused high performing employee.  At the same token, our leader who was less experienced and didn’t know how to handle high potential employees, now does.  Growth happens.

Unfortunately, 99% of organizations refuse to bring back an employee who was fired, ever!  It’s too bad really – you’re probably missing out on some great talent, especially if you’re in a smaller geographic area with limited talent pools to begin with.  Sometimes it’s up to get our organizations to become a little more open minded to the fact that change happens, and not every person who gets fired, is a bad employee.

3 Myths of the ‘Cool’ Office

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I think the one thing that ‘normal’ HR Pros are sick of hearing about it the crap in HR that gets the most headlines in the media – The Cool Office Perks! Let’s face it the majority of HR Pros don’t have the budget to do anything close to what you hear about in magazines articles about the cool new start-ups or big IT firms like Google and Yahoo.  We can’t give our employees free lunches, and brand new open environment office spaces that look like a cross between a MTV Real World house and a abandoned slaughter house and unlimited time off!

The Atlantic had a great article on this recently that will for sure put ‘normal’ HR pros at ease on these escalation of perks:

“Don’t be fooled by the perks at all those Silicon Valley (and Alley) offices — it’s all just part of a subtle plot to control employee behavior. The founders of Fab.com, which just got itself a $1 billion valuation, admitted as much to Bloomberg’s Sarah Freier. The shopping site wields its beer on tap, free lunch, and ice-cream machine as a means to force Fab employees to send emails in a “certain font,” use high-quality paper, and always “be Fab” — whatever terrible thing that means. Those types of office perks abound at startups, of course, not only as a way to attract the best talent, but also to get that “talent” working on message, official office font included. Each and every kegerator serves as a reminder of what you owe the company…

It sounds like the best perk ever: You could, officially, and under official policy, get paid for a three-month summer vacation. But of course the increasingly popular you-work-so-hard-that-we-won’t-count strategy doesn’t work that way. First, most companies wouldn’t allow it. The marketing company Xiik, for example, boasts the limitless vacation offer, but in its fine print discourages long hiatuses. “There are no hidden agendas; xiik employees can take as much paid time off as needed,” claims a Xiik project manager on the company website, before clarifying what that really means: “As nice as it would be to regularly leave for months at a time, common sense prevails: In most cases, it simply doesn’t make sense to be away from work for extended periods.”

I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with HR Pros across so many industries that involve this idea of how do you compete against all these perks?!  I’ve always come back to  – you don’t!  The perks are just perks  – they might help you hold onto some folks a bit longer – but they don’t make your employees better and they don’t raise the performance of your company.  In HR we need to figure out those things, first.   Here are the 3 Myths (Thank you Sally!) of the ‘Cool’ Office concept:

1. Offering Free food and drinks will keep our employees working longer and more productive. Workers apparently “waste” 2 billion minutes a day of “productivity” getting snacks, lunch, and coffee, according to Staples.

2. Having an ‘open’ office environment foster collaboration and productivity. A recent Quartz article outlines all the terrible things that come out of the open quarters, such as decreased productivity and more airborne illnesses.

3. Unlimited time off allows your employees the ultimate work-life balance – which will increase productivity and retention.  The reality is your work culture makes people feel bad about taking time off and discourages people from utilizing ‘unlimited’ time off policies.  The reason companies can offer ‘unlimited’ time off policies is because studies continue to show those organizations with these policies actually use less time off than those with set limit policies.  It’s a benefit to organizations to use this – not employees!

HR Announces – ‘We’re Out of Ideas’

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Recently the crew at FOT has been having some conversations about what’s new in HR.  It use to be all you had to do was show up at a HR conference and listen to someone from Zappos, Google, Sodexo, etc. to find out what were the latest and greatest happenings going on in HR!  But no more – it seems like HR is in a dead period of new ideas!  I blame the recession – why wouldn’t I – the ‘Great Recession’ gets blamed for everything – might as well take some HR heat!   Nobody at FOT could really come up with any ideas that were new.  But thankfully the good HR folks at Google came through one more idea, but I don’t how new it is…

From Quartz – Google admits those infamous brainteasers were completely useless for hiring:

“Google has admitted that the headscratching questions it once used to quiz job applicants (How many piano tuners are there in the entire world? Why are manhole covers round?) were utterly useless as a predictor of who will be a good employee.

“We found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time,” Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google, told the New York Times. “They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart…

Bock says Google now relies on more quotidian means of interviewing prospective employees, such as standardizing interviews so that candidates can be assessed consistently, and “behavioral interviewing,” such as asking people to describe a time they solved a difficult problem. It’s also giving much less weight to college grade point averages and SAT scores.”

Yes, you are reading that correctly – Google’s ‘new’ HR idea is to go retro!  Back to behavioral interviewing and standardized interview decks – hello 90’s!  Isn’t that wonderful – I can’t believe Google didn’t have someone at SHRM 13 leading a session like “Google’s Strategic HR Innovations – Just Interview Them Stupid!”  HR ladies would have packed the house to find out how they to could jump into the 90’s.  Also, let’s just come right out corporately and validate to all those kids in college – you’re just wasting your time and spending your parents retirement.  I’ve really never been so excited for our industry!

So, I would like to take it upon myself and the entire HR community to let the world know – HR is out of ideas!

Here’s were we/HR stand:

– Still need to hire people

– Still need to train our employees

– Still need to provide benefits and pay administration

– Still planning the company picnic, and/or ‘holiday party

Long live HR.